


Tuesdays with Maura

by leslielol



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 09:04:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18870064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: Danny the Street collects Larry Trainor for a few hours every Tuesday night, and it’s not for his karaoke performances.





	Tuesdays with Maura

**Author's Note:**

> I recently powered through this show, not sure if I kind of hated it or really loved it. But I cried like a baby during _Danny Patrol,_ which was so lovely, especially for being done broadly and clearly, obviously committed to its themes. I wanted a little more time in that world, so here’s this.

Six months ago, Larry Trainor would have thought turning the corner from tending his makeshift garden in one of Doom Manor’s less-utilized breakfast nooks and finding himself suddenly outside, under street lamps and stars, might have proven frightening, or at the very least--disorientating.

But the ground under his feet felt secure. The air was cool and clean, the street livelier now that Danny didn’t feel so under threat by the Bureau of Normalcy. Those who spent their lives on Danny seemed to have taken to the change well. They were out in droves most nights. They smiled and waved at his familiar visage, and if that wasn’t enough--and really, it was _everything_ \--there was a personalized greeting from Danny themselves. 

It changed every time.

A fluttering cloud of ticker tape spelled out, _HI, LARRY!_

_COME ON IN, LARRY_ unfurled in toilet paper among a tree’s branches.

In strings of lights in a shop window, _WE’VE ALL MISSED YOU._

The first few times, Larry arrived in time for the night’s entertainment. He took in karaoke and drag performances, applauded for those brave enough to take the stage on open mic night, and watched in absolute awe as these vibrant, unique people held one another close and slow danced at what turned out to be a monthly Prom, at which they ordained Danny their _King, Queen, and Everything In Between._

(Larry, swept up in the moment, raised his glass--but everyone else poured theirs on the ground, and all around them Danny produced champagne bubbles, and played grainy VHS footage of past Miss America winners on every available flat surface.) 

Those nights were thrilling. Larry felt the Negative Spirit inside of him fall quiet, as if to give precedence to the grander tradition at play. _Life_ was happening in ways it hadn’t happened for Larry in decades. Sheer exhilaration had been outside Larry’s wheelhouse since he fell out of the sky. Rather than invade the moment, the Spirit was content to play onlooker. 

The all-night ragers didn’t last, of course. 

Larry suspected the late starts were a referendum on his karaoke song choices, but regardless, it became a matter of fact that, while wandering the Manor, Larry took an unsuspecting step and wound up in the cramped, narrow space behind the gilded stage at Peeping Tom’s Perpetual Cabaret. The night’s main show was quieting down to nothing but techno beats and DJs poured into their gold lame briefs. With nowhere to go but up, Larry found himself in the changing room where one Maura Lee Karupt donned and doffed her wigs.

Cheap chandeliers hogged the ceiling, glittering red with faux rubies. Just one might have been gaudy, but the presence of a dozen or more gave the space new life. 

Some nights, as she shifted out of her larger-than-life persona and into something no less powerful, but rendered in halves--a full face but no wig, a floor-sweeping, feather-lined, sheer housecoat and nothing but her eyes done up--she recounted the show if Larry missed it, or told of great performances of the past. 

Star-studded affairs, Larry was assured. Every single one.

Larry took a seat and gamely listened. 

And when he could manage, he offered witty observations, or mimed some applause. He was even given to a chuckle, once or twice. 

But mostly, he watched.

Sometimes, Maura Lee Karupt could feel Larry’s begoggled gaze driving into her, through her, and in search of that other face of hers, Morris Wilson.

But Larry didn’t want the man who’d been a part of the bone-and-soul-crushing bureaucracy; he wasn't on _that kind_ of a fact-finding mission. Reconnaissance was the word Cyborg used, and defined after use, as if Larry didn't have a whole military career to inform him. (Larry didn't begrudge the kid this; it wasn't as though he'd kept up to date on his certifications.) 

Rather, what he was searching for, what he _wanted_ was the person who’d made the choice to step away, and step out. 

One night, sitting in a wig-cap and a kimono so long and luxurious, the silk puddled at both their feet, she said, “You can call me Morris if you’d like.” 

Not Wilson; that felt like a title owned by the Bureau. But. Her mother called her Morris. 

Larry cocked his head slightly, and raised what would have been eyebrows--if he had them. Deadened, radioactive skin damage or not, nuance wasn’t entirely lost to him. 

“Not Maura?”

“It’s all or nothing with Maura Lee Karupt,” Morris said, the defense at the ready and ushered in over a sure tongue. “Morris better understands the need for leniency, sometimes.”

Larry nodded, as if he understood.

Morris shook her head, first to dislodge a few errant pieces of confetti, and then in gentle bemusement. Danny brought Larry here for a reason, and still--Larry refused to be reasoned with.

“You’re awfully quiet tonight.”

Larry knew a leading question when he heard one, but Morris had been too consistently kind and open to play the duplicity game now. All the same, Larry was a cautious creature by necessity.

He responded with an innocuous, “I knew that song you sang. I caught the end of it.” With a shrug, he added, “I don’t know why Danny rarely lets me see the show anymore.”

Danny made themselves known in a blocky spread of lipstick on the vanity mirror: _YOU DON’T PAY THE COVER._

“And I like our little chats,” Morris insisted, waving Danny away. “It's like free therapy.”

Larry huffed ruefully; his bandages expanded a centimeter from his mouth. For all his body lacked now, sometimes he'd lie awake at night, trying to figure why it should still intake breath. He wondered if it was an illusion he kept for himself, taking in and expelling air because it made him feel human in that most basic sense. He worried if he stopped pretending, he'd soon learn otherwise. 

“I've been in therapy for a long time,” he said. And it never felt like this--good, and loose, and friendly, as opposed to feeling like someone had a hand around his trachea and Larry himself teased a finger on a pistol's trigger. It was always a feeling of impending doom, but absent any certainty as to the cause. 

“Really?” Morris asked, her tone denoting what she didn't say plainly: that someone with heaps of therapy under their belt shouldn't be in such a sorry state as Larry.

And Larry could admit as much himself: “Well. I've been… in a room, and asked questions.” 

“Add a bucket of water and we're talking a different game.”

“Or a blowtorch.” 

Morris was quiet for a moment. She began to remove her makeup, but Larry knew better than to see a blank canvas for long; Marua was only revising, editing, creating a new look for yet another show. The party had to go on.

For their transitory nature, Larry cherished these moments. Just seeing a face transform itself--even by such minimal means as eyeliner and rouge--stirred a aching hopefulness from his heart. The Spirit had no dominion over this private thought: the idea that a person could be wholly remade, and remade, and remade _again_ and _countless times over,_ by as much as one's teeth-clenching force of will, or as little as a steady hand. 

Some cleanser, a few dabs of something to render her skin its most bright and dewey, and Morris was ready to begin anew, to adopt her next chosen self. 

She looked away from the mirror instead, and focused on Larry.

The expression was held deep in place, as though it had its roots beyond the skin. Larry imagined this miserable, contrite expression would appear on an x-ray, would shadow itself on skull and bone for how ingrained it seemed.

“I worked in the field,” Morris said. “I sought out targets in the open, because I could hide myself well. Make myself wholly unremarkable.” She gestured towards her whole self, kimono drawn low on a shoulder, hair brushed back into a wig cap. _Can you imagine?_

“But it wasn't as though I had no idea what I was bringing people into. I knew why they were terrified to be taken away.” The humor and bemusement in her voice fell away entirely. “I heard their screams on my lunch break.”

Then she straightened her spine, and at once returned to form as the glittering totem who had first captivated Larry on stage. 

“All of that is to say,” her sotto, silky voice returned to her as she imparted pearls of wisdom (and considered, idly, drawing a string of them about her neck), “You’re not alone in seeking therapy. But there’s something to be said for two friends, shooting the shit.” 

The rest was suggested in silence, but no less understood: _I can appreciate your story. I’ll understand more of it than you think._

The very idea should have terrified Larry--as most things did--but exhilaration found him first, and proved a stronger hold. Like so much Larry had come to appreciate about Danny the Street and their Dannizens, their freewheeling exuberance blazing from moment to moment was chief among his delights. 

Inconceivably, it felt like something near and dear to him. But such was the bitter rub: he’d never so much as _dreamed_ of living unapologetically. He’d always known well enough to bear his shame, and leverage it towards his own well-being. 

The answer revealed itself to him sometime after his fourth visit.

_It would be like flying again._

He'd be untouchable, unstoppable. And he wouldn’t have to lock himself into a jet-fueled tin can to do it. 

But in bearing witness to who the Dannizens were and how they lived--imbued with love and respect for others, confidence for themselves--Larry knew just as well that he couldn't merely arrive; he had to announce himself. 

_All or nothing._

“Before I was… this,” Larry began slowly, as if to give Morris every opportunity to stop the self-perpetuating anguish and go about her evening. 

“...I was a lot of things.”

From cherry-painted lips, Morris served him a sticky-sweet smile.

“You had a rich social and professional life? Dish, girl. Tell a tramp how a lady lives.”

Larry had a line at the ready--always. This one died on his tongue. He could practically feel it shrivel up, gasp its final breath, and begin its decomposition against the roof of his mouth. Like the rest of Larry, its charred remains would never fully heal or fully leave him.

That emptied Larry’s arsenal of everything but the truth. 

“I was a liar,” he said, and looked down at his lap in embarrassment. “And a coward. Every other word out of my mouth was meant to detract from everything I wasn’t saying.”

“Honey, you’re preaching to the choir.”

 _No,_ Larry thought ferociously. Whatever Morris had done in service to the Bureau of Normalcy, it wasn’t so intimate and all-encompassing as Larry’s own betrayals.

“I was a husband. A _father.”_

He hated to say it, to afford himself that title. If not outright fraud, at the very least it represented ill gotten gains. The guilt was old, but renewed in recent years after meeting Cliff and seeing how essential and informative fatherhood was to his character, whereas Larry had let the association fall away from him. 

“It wasn’t just lies I told. I built them, lived inside of them. I dressed up in my flimsy rhetoric, and when that didn't work, I surrounded myself with actual _people._ And I ruined them.”

Finally, to Larry’s expectation and utter heartbreak, Morris looked uncertain. Her eyes softened and gave away her gaze, which moved slowly about Larry’s person. She hadn’t judged what she’d seen at first blush, but knowing Larry that much better put the whole package up for grabs. 

Larry readied himself for a swift dismissal, but like the line--none came.

Morris only offered what time had tested for her: “If you were kind to them, no matter the rest, you can bet they forgave you.”

Like most tenderness he heard from other people, Larry didn’t take it to heart.

But he held it, and would ruminate, and maybe in another few decades would find it had some worth.

“My wife… lucky for her, didn’t love me. Or maybe she did, but fell out of it quick enough, after realizing what she’d saddled herself with.” That Larry didn’t bear any disdain for Sheryl showed in the idling of his thoughts, the way he arrived to them in unhurried sequence. He’d come to that realization in the early years of his tenure at the Ant Farm, where thoughts of John Bowers proved too painful, so he focused his anger on those who’d abandoned him willingly. Even those fires were snuffed out fast.

“I don’t think she ever hated me, though. Even when she left me in the hospital after the accident, telling the boys I’d died… she was sorry to do it.” He’d screamed after her, begged and pleaded. But in the subsequent silence, under the pain and duress of his whole body buzzing with radiation and licking itself raw with decay, Larry found an eerie relief in knowing he’d finally asked too much of her, that she’d gritted her teeth and denied him.

To that point, he regretted beyond measure telling John to leave him. One last conversation, one chance at a goodbye that didn’t just happen in his dreams--Larry would have killed for as much, now.

 _Priorities._ Sheryl always bore the brunt of Larry’s.

 _Hindsight,_ too, while he was ruminating on the mistakes lost to everyone who might have once been alive to feel their ramifications, everyone but him. Even if given the chance a thousand times over, Larry knew he’d make the same mistakes. He’d been too scared of himself, terrified of the unknown thing inside of him, mortified that that was the least of what proding government scientists had discovered. 

He’d given up so quickly. 

(John would have been so disappointed.)

Larry remembered lying on the floor of his cell, body wet and piss-soaked inside the rubber suit. He remembered sloshing into an upright position, remembered that no one was coming for him, because the world thought him dead, because that was the lie his wife first propagated, and the government gleefully followed. 

But the thought caught itself, pivoted, and in his next shallow breath, Larry accepted that, with the cover she granted him for those static years of courtship and marriage, she had been the only thing keeping him alive. 

So what if she left him for dead in the end.

Morris, perhaps sensing the distance Larry had fallen, asked, “You have children?”

Larry’s answer caught on a breath in his throat, causing him to stutter.

“Two boys.”

“And you were their hero.”

Larry shook his head. “I was _a_ hero. I can’t claim with any certainty they liked me anymore with or without my face on a cereal box. Limited edition.”

“A theme for you.” 

Larry noticed his hands had drawn apart and gone their separate ways to wrap loosely around his own middle. If he pitched forward, braced himself, maybe the constant reminder of how utterly _painfully fucking ironic_ it felt to lose everything he never was.

“I did love them,” he said. His relief that such a sentiment still had an iron grip around his heart was palpable; he hadn’t strayed so far from his humanity, save for looking like a species of algae. (“Chondrus crispus,” one of Jane’s personalities had once informed him of his coloring.)

“It was easy. They were good boys.” Larry looked to the ceiling, the floor, every opposing wall, as if there was any escaping the pounding of his heart, the quickening of his pulse as he fell into deepest favor with memories of a life long forgotten. “Thomas--my oldest--wanted to fly, like me. Or be an astronaut. Or a park ranger. He couldn’t decide. Paul loved animals. He’d always come home with turtles or stray cats. A baby rabbit, once. We built a hutch and--” 

Larry stopped himself, unused to the clumsy fervor he tipped into when excited. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean to… I wanted to ask about you.”

“Honey, between the two of us, there is more story wrapped up in _here._ ” Morris put one acrylic fingernail to Larry’s chest, and dragged it a few inches south. “And that’s rare for me to admit.” She drew the fingernail back up, and liked how the breath caught in Larry’s throat. “They really put your face on a cereal box?”

Larry coughed and leaned back. 

“I had no problem being looked at. It was being seen I couldn’t handle.” 

He raised a hand to rub at the back of his neck, and thought disjointedly about feeling the sun warm his skin, or the wind twist his hair into curls. Things so far gone he couldn’t place the memory as well as he could only imagine.

“And, yeah. Couple weeks before the launch. Looked pretty sharp.” The hand fell back into his lap, emptied. “Hope they recalled it before pictures of the crash made the front page.” 

An unintended, reverent silence crept through the door and took a seat in the cramped space right along with them. Of everything he’d lost, his good looks didn’t even rate. But Larry knew then--as he did now--about perception. Doors opened for him, people were charmed and glad to meet a face like his. So long as they never knew him, Larry was the perfect hometown hero, the All-American man. The work and training and skill were all his own, but people had to _want him,_ first.

John Bowers certainly had. 

“A good thing is easy to want,” Morris said, as if reading Larry's thoughts. Maybe Danny helped with that; Larry couldn't assume to know the extent of their abilities. 

Or maybe this was only Morris’ own intuition at work, born of a mirrored existence. 

“...Unless you don’t know a good thing when you see it.” 

Larry considered the facts: Morris had denied herself so fervently, she hadn’t known who she was for the better part of her life. Larry had felt his desires since childhood, but had the wherewithal to hide and lie about them endlessly.

“For as scared as I was, I made due.” Larry looked down at his hands, his bandaged fingers twisting nervously in his lap. “Mostly with fellas I drove six hours out of town to find. Or guys I knew were shipping off someplace, probably to die.” 

(Behind Larry, but perfectly within Morris’ eyeline, Danny spelled out a dower, _SHIT’S GETTING DARK_ in the paisley wallpaper.)

“John Bowers was really the only person I’d ever spoken to, after. During.” And this, not because their rendezvous were so luxurious in their timing, but because Larry couldn’t _not._ Even while kissing that mouth, he wanted more from it--every thought tucked deep inside the man’s mind, every desire trapped in his heart, Larry wanted a full account. “He was the only person I’ve ever really loved.”

“I believe that,” Morris said, her voice soft and condoling. 

Were he not a mottled red and in a constant state and decay such that his body functioned by halves, Larry would have flushed scarlet. That he did not love himself was self-evident; but it was outright embarrassing to be caught admitting as much. 

A few mumbled denials didn’t make it out over the thudding techno beats carrying on in the bar below them. 

“So, uh, you like performing?”

Morris took heaps more pity on Larry Trainor, and answered him with only minimal mockery.

“Why yes Larry, I do believe we’ve met.” 

Larry shuffled around in his seat, hands and elbows craning inwards and out, as if he was trying to aerate his point. “You said before that you had to. To keep this place alive. I’m curious if that changes how it feels for you.”

Morris cut a hand through the air, slicing it in clean halves, a gesture as succinct as her answer.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said.

“It’s still worth doing,” she said, and went on: “For Danny, for my community, for my soul. I’m not making amends here. This place, Danny, is a _gift._ What I’ve been given is the opportunity to become more myself.”

(On an unplugged digital alarm clock across the room, Danny offered a modest, _AW SHUCKS._ )

“You’re so brave,” Larry gushed--unusual for him; he’d constricted himself tighter than his bandages when it came to such personal proclamations.

Morris found herself smirking. “Is that a question?” 

_“...how.”_

“Necessity.” The answer arrived swift and certain, but the indignity that came with being asked chased fast at her six-inch heels. “And, Jesus, Larry, maybe just out of plain old self respect.” 

Larry put up his hands, palms out, ceding the point. He slumped back, legs splayed out a little farther, ease releasing itself through his normally stringent form. He wrestled for a time with a rejoinder. Morris gave him space and started brushing out a short wig she liked for _Whitney Houston_ routines.

It was nothing if not a Whitney Houston night.

“I used to think I was something else, flying experimental aircrafts. Pushing every limit. You get thrown out of the earth’s atmosphere, burned alive, and inhabited by a cosmic energy _one time…_ ”

A crass line, and Morris had one to match: “You get back up and you try, try again.”

Morris thought somewhere beneath the full-body bandages, ennui, and general air of disenchantment, she’d wrestled a smile out of Larry. 

“Between Danny and the Spirit, you’ve got a lot of amorphous beings looking out for you,” Morris said. “Hell, count me in as one of those.” 

Another smile, she was sure of it. 

“You are not starving for a figure, Ms. Lee Karupt.”

“Ever the charmer, Captain.” Morris smiled broadly. “I envy that about you, you know.” 

Larry was silent for a time, unmoved as though the Spirit had left his body. It hadn’t, and he startled into being again. 

“Sorry. What? Sorry--” 

“No, no, no--can the self-deprecating bullshit and _put it in the underground bunker for armageddon, honey._ Take two steps back. Then pivot. And stick the landing.” 

“I’m not a flirt.” 

_Indignant_ was a strange look coming from a man too buried under bandages to show it on his person.

“Did I say flirt?” Morris waited for all the squaring up Larry Trainor was not about to do. “You’re a sweet-talker. A bit of a sap. And principled, which means you take everything too seriously.” 

“So you got my number,” Larry said, still huffy. “What are you?”

“I’m my own creation. I love what I am. I love myself fiercely. I tell the world my worth. I hear it back in applause.” Every word of it was true, of that Morris-cum-Maura Lee Karupt had no doubt. As with anything in a world so fraught with desperation masquerading as love, confidence doubling for pride, there was more truth, other and earlier than even that. “But. Would it be so awful, being told nice things by some sweet-faced boy?” 

“I may not have the face for saying so myself, but,” _I want to be smiling,_ Larry thought. _Please let it look like I’m smiling._ “I think you’re beautiful.” 

That contemplative look returned to Morris’ face, unwinding the expression from haughty and supreme to something far quieter. Larry was gutted. 

Morris was not unconvinced of the sentiment: wholesome, saccharine, harmless.

Surely, Captain Larry Trainor was made of stronger stuff than that.

Morris stood. From her broad shoulders the flowered kimono gave way, and her open stance let the whole thing fall away to the ground, waterlilies and inky black waters pooling at her feet. The moment held as though the opposite had happened, and Morris herself had risen from those depths. 

Larry felt he was seeing more of her, though she’d not yet stripped herself of the sequined cocktail dress she’d worn for during the night’s first performance. What rendered her naked wasn’t just her open hands and parted lips, but the reverence blooming like Gloriosa superba in Larry’s chest: fast and fatal. 

Her steady gaze made Larry feel much the same.

“Show me so,” she said.

Larry would have had ample reason and cause to shrink back: the danger, the implication. But instead he stood, as if to match wits.

“I--can’t. My body--the radiation--direct contact could--”

“I like a gentleman who gloves up.” Morris approached him. “Just…” 

She took his hands. And even for standing already, Larry felt himself being drawn to new heights. She guided his arms to wrap loosely along her lower back, to contain her at her sides. She draped her strong arms over Larry’s pitched-forwarded shoulders, and stepped closer to him in an effort to stiffen his spine.

It was half-embrace, half-dance. The erratic beats bleeding in from the floorboards could not overpower the decisive sway Morris adopted for the moment, one that was gentle, one that Larry could learn with. 

She heard his breath shudder in short, fevered gasps before stopping altogether. Morris shifted to cup one hand against the back of Larry's head. She felt heat, the swirl of mangled tissue, and bone. She curled her other arm around his shoulders and Larry tightened his hold around her in response, feeling her height and brawn, and wanting her that much closer to him. 

The wall of impassive calm Larry had pressed between them finally shattered, and he began to sob. He’d been so lonely, so absent from his own body that having another’s pressed against his was revolutionary.

“It’s too late for regrets, Larry.” Morris’ voice broke with a riotous cackle; it was ridiculous, the pain they'd burdened themselves with as young men. The time they'd lost for it. 

More ridiculous still was the fact that, even in a world of total mayhem and untold phenomenon, they'd not lost every opportunity. They could yet still bloom with untold strength. 

“We’re a couple of tired old queens, so the bullshit--your own, or anyone else’s--can’t get a pass anymore. It gets knocked clean on its ass, every time. You get me?” 

She held him tighter, an assurance that the fight didn’t have to be ugly, didn’t have to stir from a place of anger--he could fight gladly. He could find some righteous cause or the friends at his side. But the fight was intrinsic, and there was no living if it wasn’t won on every front. 

Morris spread her hands wide, further securing Larry, collecting him in from that much more of the world. He sank into her, impossibly close, so that their bodies were flush. Loneliness bled through his wraps and seized her with terrible force. She tried to meet it gamely, but felt there was not enough in her to recover what he’d lost over lifetimes. 

They were conspirators trading intelligence; it was as though Morris had never fully left her time as a field agent. 

When Larry remembered himself, embarrassment was his first refuge. He tried to draw away under a muffled and wet, “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t--isn’t good for Danny…”

From a sepia-toned, printer-paper banner unfurling from the ceiling, Danny offered a weak, _A PITY PARTY IS STILL A PARTY._

“Hush,” Morris said--to Larry, to Danny, she didn’t specify. “We’re having a moment.” 

She rubbed circles against Larry’s back, her efforts unwavering even as Larry’s body continued to shudder and wrack itself with sobs.

“It’s okay. You’re okay.”

When Larry pulled away, Morris saw dampened tracks down his cheeks. His sunglasses, she supposed, hid the worst of it.

“You should maybe--ah--change your clothes. Or wash your hands.”

Morris kept her hands on Larry, if only to straighten his jacket and smooth his shirtfront.

“And if I turn into Spiderman or the Hulk, all the better.”

“I’m sorry, who or what?”

“Danny takes us all _kinds_ of places,” Morris said, her tone unabashedly gleeful. “Maybe, after you find what you’re looking for, you can bump around with us some.” 

Morris put herself apart from Larry, allowing space to look at him and for him to look at her in return. A parting gift, of a kind.

She shelved a hand on a cocked hip. She may have been half-dressed and absent a full face of makeup--and nevermind a wig--but she had one better. She had _stage presence._

“Danny, you send this sweet boy on his way.” 

The response from Danny circling the ceiling fan _(WHO IS THE PHYSICS-WARPING SENTIENT STREET HERE, YOU OR US?)_ went unnoticed by both Morris and Larry, who held one another’s gazes until Larry suddenly seemed desperate to either speak or stay, but couldn’t manage either. With the next step he took, Danny carried him off. 

Morris stared at the empty space that had held her troubled new friend. Waves of radiation didn’t have the wallpaper peeling off in great sheets, but something was certainly changed by his being there. She wondered after how much Larry expected someone’s view of the world could be drastically altered with or without him in it. 

Morris was glad to know the answer herself, by measure of the absence felt deep in her chest, crumbling like an ancient cavern found and ransacked by witless men.

Danny warped their sentiments into the twisting woodgrain of the floorboards: _I WORRY ABOUT LARRY._

Morris raised her chin, defiant. 

“I don’t.” 

-

Returned to the lawn at Doom Manor, Larry raised his head back and let the cool night air brace the dampened bandages across his face. Months of testing at the Art Farm proved he could withstand freezing and boiling temperatures without his cells breaking down any more than they had. But he’d _felt_ everything, then. 

He felt this, now. A cool, clear night, and his whole partnered self, free to bear it or take shelter. It would _always_ be his choice. 

In the windows, Larry saw his plants--all of them relocated after Jane commandeered use of the bus, none of them positioned as to receive their optimal amounts of sunlight. Larry had made the mistake of allowing Cliff to help bring them in out of the driveway, a task which--weeks later--somehow remained in effect, as Cliff determined the plants would enjoy a rousing tour of the Manor.

He saw light blurring through the Manor. From the parlor, he presumed. 

Someone was waiting up for him. 

As he started up the steps, he felt a warmth in his chest. The Spirit had brought itself to the very edges of Larry Trainor, and observed him as well as it could without departing. This was not the style of interruption he’d battled, suffered, and been concussed with the past fifty years. 

Here was caution. Here was care. 

Larry had experienced neither in decades, and in one night, had been overrun with a king’s bounty. 

Or a queen’s.

Larry choked back a startled laugh, and tears ahead of that. He smoothed a hand over his chest, over warped and ruined skin, layered gauze, and a cashmere turtleneck, greeting the Spirit.

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry, pal. You’re saddled with a sap.”

**Author's Note:**

> So this was a story about two people hugging, but that’s it, that’s the show. Add a healthy dose of body horror, butts with teeth, and Alan Tudyk aggressively being Alan Tudyk and you got it.


End file.
